The people in the neighborhood

My original intent was to wax philosophical on this topic. I changed my mind.

I present: The People in Our Neighborhoods. Have some fun! Sing along.

Verse 1: Sing with me
Kelly Forostiak's a school teach-er
Who says her kids are not like he-r
She says that they are all assholes
I think it's time for new job goals!

Kelly Forostiak's a person in your neighborhood,
In your neighborhood,
In your neighborho-od!
A teacher is a person in your neighborhood (school)
A person that you meet each day!

Verse 2: 

There's Teacher's Aide, Jane Allen Wo-od
She posted something real un-go-od
She called Michelle a go-ril-la
The school board had to fire her!

Jane Allen Wood is a person in your neighborhood,
In your neighborhood,
In your neighborho-od!
A teacher's aide's a person in your neighborhood
A person that you meet each day!

Verse 3:
Diane Amoratis was a nurse in Philly.
She dreamed of running down a Black rally
She posted on Facebook one night,
Before long she was out of sight!

Oh Diane is a person in your neighborhood,
In your neighborhood,
In your neighborho-od!
A nurse is a person in your neighborhood (hospital)
A person that you meet each day!

Verse 4.
Med students spend long years in scho-ol
They learn all kinds of stuff that's co-ol
But some of them think Blacks don't hurt,
That thinking is as dumb as dirt!

Oh a med student's a person in your neighborhood,
In your neighborhood,
In your neighborho-od!
A med student's a person in your neighborhood (ER)
A person that you meet each day!

Verse 5.
Josh Doggrell is a White suprem-acist
That means that he's a real rac-ist
But he is also a beat cop
Let's hope he never tells you "Stop!"

A policeman is a person in your neighborhood,
In your neighborhood,
In your neighborho-od!
A policeman is a person in your neighborhood (police station)

A person that you meet each day!

Bonus verse!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Verse 6.
John Roberts, is the Chief Supre-me
I don't know what you think that mean
He's always hated the VRA
One day he made it go away!

(verse addendum)
He supported Plessy v Fergus-on
Which encouraged school segregati-on
He thinks that we're post-racial now,
He's wrong and this pic shows you how!

John Roberts is a person in your neighborhood,
In your neighborhood,
In your neighborho-od!

These people are the people in our neighborhoods.
They're the people that we meet, when we're walking down the street.
They're the people that we meet EACH DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And that's just six examples. Think there might be more? I sure do. U-biq-ui-damn-tous. Erry-damn-where.

A New Notoriety?

An open letter to the no-longer-quite-so-notorious RBG

Dear Justice Ginsburg:

My disappointment couldn't be greater. I thought you were a champion of my rights, but I see now that perhaps I gave you more credit than you deserved. When you suggested (who am I kidding, you did not merely 'suggest', you were pretty clear) that the protest of Kaepernick and others in support of Black life was dumb and disrespectful, I found myself utterly disappointed.

I appreciate every opinion you have written and the overall effect of your work on the bench, but I have to say that your referring to Colin Kaepernick's protest as arrogant and stupid really shook me for a moment. Fortunately, my distress was only momentary.

I keep finding myself having to re-learn that in this society the label liberal doesn't necessarily translate to passionately committed to equality. The great epiphany your utterances forced upon me is this: equality for you is a matter of law whereas for me, it is a matter of existence.

There is no part of my existence that isn't challenged by continuing efforts to erode the notion - at this point it really is only a notion - of equality in these United States. My economic life? Shaped by others' willingness to accept the idea of equality. My professional life? Shaped by others' willingness to accept the idea of equality. My access to health care, education, environmental justice? All, shaped by others' willingness to accept the idea of equality. Reading most of our country's history, as I know you have, one cannot but acknowledge that the journey to equality has long been a helluva challenge for the majority. Pick an era when people of color made the tiniest step forward, then take a look at the era subsequent, and the effort to erase or reverse that step is certain to be found. The truth is out there.

It is in this that we differ.  For you it seems 'equality' is this thing you talk about Monday to Friday, from nine o'clock in the am until five o'clock pm. For me, equality is the journey of every one of the 86,400 seconds of every blessed day. There is no moment when my 'equality' or my 'freedom' can be readily accessed without the possibility of challenge. This is why Kaep kneels.

While you are free to dismiss (and then return a few days later chastened) the protests born of Black folks' reality, that is a privilege to which I do not have access. While you are free to not even know what the protest is about and yet, ignorant of the details, know with an alarming degree of certainty that it is dismissible, that is a privilege I do not have. This is why Kaep kneels. 

You are, of course, absolutely entitled to your opinion on Kaepernick, just as I am entitled to my opinion of your opinion. That's what freedom is.

However, freedom begins to end, and something else begins, when your opinion coupled with your relative power, has the capacity to negatively impact my access to basic safety. When your opinion + your power have the capacity to ennoble the unlawful (and often deadly) actions of police officers, vigilantes, right wing zealots, and various internet trolls against people like me. That is not freedom. Well, to be certain, in that situation, you continue to enjoy freedom, but it is a version of freedom that undermines and negates mine. 

Herein lies another thing that differentiates between us.

For you, the SCOTUS serves to solidify the law; to establish clear, hard lines that must not be crossed. Yet, don't those lines get crossed anyway? Don't people get executed who shouldn't? Don’t people spend decades in jail who oughtn’t? Don't bad things happen to good people (and sometimes to bad ones as well)?

In your SCOTUS-world, justice requires that I first be harmed. That is justice to you. It ain’t no justice to me, however. I’m not surprised that you’re OK with this version of American justice though, since you’re not the one being shot at, brutalized, or worse, killed.

We would prefer not to be harmed at all. This is why Kaep kneels.

We would prefer a system that seeks to prevent our injury, rather than one that offers a Band-Aid for our bullet wounds. Your comfort with reactive justice works for you because that is the privilege that your position and race afford you. My commitment though, must be to pre-emptive justice; proactive justice; justice at the initial point of contact with the system, rather than at the end. 

After 400 years of America’s reactive approach to ‘justice’, people of color have cottoned on to the fact that the time for a proactively just system is now. This is why Kaep kneels.  This is why others now join him: because there is no effective redress for the fatal harms the system so giddily metes out.

It matters not what your opinion is on the case of Tamir Rice, John Crawford III, Rekia Boyd, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Jeremy Mardis, or the hundreds of other men, women, and children slaughtered by police, because they’ve all gone to glory, and there is still no treatment for that. There’s no assessment you and your sister and brother justices can offer that will bring redress. And so we kneel.

It matters not the results of your ex post facto review of the case of X or Y prisoner held on Death Row for a crime he/she did not commit. Those days, weeks, months, years are lost. Forever. We seek justice first. We seek a system wherein equality is the basis, the starting point, not a result insisted upon by a judge and which – like the SCOTUS school desegregation order of 1954 – can be flouted by the powerful.

The courts' eventual adjudication of innocence for the dead or the falsely accused/incarcerated serves no purpose other than to give the system and those who hold privilege within it a reason to feel good; such adjudication is but an opportunity for the society to pretend it is evolving. The reality is that those who were harmed in the first place remain eternally harmed.

This form of redress is a Pyrrhic victory of the meanest sort. SCOTUS justice, with all due respect, is a Sponge Bob Square Pants Band-Aid on a gaping, festering sore. The financial, social and emotional consequences of having been fatally wronged can never be fixed. There can be no ‘justice’ after the fact. This is why Kaepernick kneels.

It would have cost you nothing but the discomfort of shrugging off your privilege, to acknowledge any of these truths. Thank you for showing me that even that shrug is a bridge too far.

Until now, I have presumed that your decisions meant that you actually cared about the people about whom you were deciding. Your recent interview tells me that that was a mistaken assumption on my part. My bad. I won't do it again. 

Regards,

Me

The fruit that fell from Muhammad's tree

I read an article about Laila Ali and her reticence to speak boldly on the issue of Black Lives. Wow! When they say that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, they clearly aren't talking about Laila.

In an interview described in the Huffington Post, Ali offered these thoughts, “By me not posting, it doesn’t mean that black lives don’t matter,” she said. “To me, it’s obvious that black lives matter. And then... I’m like, what is posting going to do? What is speaking out going to do?” Well, just wow. 

Laila may have been one of the apples of Muhammad's eyes, but this apple seems to have fallen and rolled a long, long way away from Muhammad's tree and that's a damn shame. 

I'm wondering how Laila reconciles her choice to be silent in the face of oppression with her father's own very voluble, very public, very risky activism. For him, silence would brand him as complicit. For him, silence was therefore not an option. The principles that guided him were simple: I will not fight poor people over there (Vietnam) who are likely fighting for the very things poor people, my people, desperately want right here. Did he not teach this to his children? 

Following Ms. Ali's logic, what's protesting gonna do? What's acting out gonna do? What's taking a knee gonna do? What is standing as a conscientious objector going to do? Do we only 'do' because we are assured of the effect of the doing? I'm pretty sure that's not what the GOAT was doing when he was objecting to the Vietnam War. I'm pretty sure because that's not how activism works and activists know this. Surely her father would have taught her that? And even if he didn't tell her explicitly, he sure showed her....with his life!

2) Laila ain't even conflicted: it's about the Benjamins 

"With sponsors and millions of Facebook fans, Ali said she has to be careful when posting content online because of her diverse following. “I don’t ever like to make people feel separate,” she said. It’s for this reason that she says she appreciates all aspects of diversity and inclusion."

Girl please! How careful was your father when he lost some of the best years of his boxing life to a ban? Huh? Careful? This is what you are telling your millions of fans? "Be careful! Mind them Benjamins! Principles don't matter!" Girl bye!

Laila says she doesn't want folk to feel separate, but she don't mind at all if they wind up dead? Girl, this would be laughable if it weren't so damn pitiful. Pi-ti-ful! I am full of pity. Full right up. Pity and shame. 

Later in the interview she mused, “Yes, black lives matter. Yes, White lives matter, Asian lives matter. All lives matter,” she said. “And that’s kind of what my focus is. But it’s hard because, you know, you’ve got sponsors and you’ve got this and you’ve got that. And you don’t want to step on anybody’s toes. And you’re trying to be politically correct, but at the same time trying to uplift your people.” 

Here's a word for you Laila: you cannot uplift and be politically correct simultaneously. Not in this moment in time, perhaps not ever. To uplift you have to challenge a status quo that has no problem leaving you gut shot, rendering no medical aid and trying to synchronize stories so nobody goes to jail...all while you bleed to death. To uplift you have to offer words of comfort or wisdom. You cannot uplift by keeping silence! You uplifting folk with what? Pictures of your kids whose futures are (you believe) safe and secure? Honey, ain't no number of Benjys can wash the Black away. You oughta know this. If you don't, I just told you. Govern yourself accordingly.

3) Platitudes don't keep anybody alive, not even platitudes from an Ali

"Using her children as a metaphor, Ali explained that it’s important to understand the impact and change people can have within their own homes."

Oh ok. You about to redeem yourself! Yeah girl, show me some of that Ali stuff! C'mon now! I see where you're going with this Laila, and I'ma let you finish but lemme butt in here to say that I really appreciate your suggesting that White folk need to teach their children the basics of MLK's dream: that they should judge others by the content of their character not by the color of their skin. Right? That's where you're going with that? Amirite? I'm right! I know I am.....

“I would think about what can I do as a family to take responsibility for our actions,” she said. “So, I think as black people, we have to do the things that we can do to make a change within our own community within ourselves first and then let the trickle effect happen.” 

That is so not where I thought this was going! Did Laila Ali, daughter of the GOAT Muhammad I-will-not-go-to-war-even-if-you-ban-me Ali really just respectability police Black folk? Fuh real? Laila, daughter of Muhammad, Ali just told Black people that if they would just act right; if they would just raise their kids right; if they would something they would not die.

And then Laila Ali called for trickle down humanity? I can't even with this.

#TerenceCrutcher

#PhilandoCastile
Tried to comply and died.

#TamirRice

#JohnCrawfordIII
They didn't get time to comply. They died too.

Laila Ali isn't even an apple from Muhammad's tree. She is a whole other fruit. Banana? Peach? Pineapple? Whatever. I feel like I need to like her on FB so I can have the satisfaction of clicking unlike. 

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